“You never say ‘Thank you!’”
“That’s what the money is for!”
A callous statement argued by Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm in an episode of Mad Men. Also a sentiment echoed by film fans around the world after a recent interview done between Joe and Anthony Russo and The Sunday Times, where Joe would provide his own view on the divide between audience and awards reception.
“This trend was started by Harvey Weinstein,” Joe explains. “He vilified mainstream movies to champion the art films he pushed for Oscar campaigns. Popular films were winning Oscars before the mid-Nineties, then Weinstein started mudslinging campaigns”
Of everything producer Harvey Weinstein has been accused of in just the past decade, making The Oscars arthouse central is certainly new.
Despite the vitriol Russo has been getting over this statement, he isn’t entirely wrong. Weinstein was known for his aggressive awards campaigns, which would get movies made under his name and production company, Miramax Films. His films amassed a total 20 Best Picture nominations, including 5 wins. But is he really responsible for an alienation within the AMPAS awards body? Let’s look at the stats.
Joe is probably thinking of the period between the 1950s and 1970s, where major Oscar players like Ben-Hur, The Sound of Music, and The Graduate were also major box office successes in the United States and Canada. Between 1968 and 1979, every Best Picture winner doubled as one of the ten highest grossers of the year (yes, even Patton)!
It feels like one of the last consensuses between the Academy and general audiences was Titanic, which broke box office records and equaled Oscar records —winning 11 little gold men. In hindsight however, it almost seems like an omen that Titanic’s year was sandwiched between two Miramax-dominated awards seasons, led by The English Patient and followed by Shakespeare in Love.
But it isn’t like these movies didn’t make money. By the time either film was nominated they had earned their budget back, and then some. If adjusted for inflation, these two movies each made $86 million and $70 million, respectively. Nothing to scoff at.
In fact, those are the two lowest-grossing Best Picture winners under Weinstein. The others were the smash successes Chicago ($63 million alone prior to the nominations being announced), The King’s Speech ($114 million), and of course, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($337 million). Weinstein’s monstrosities have already landed him in prison, so it’s odd to add something like arthouse centralizing the Oscars to his list of crimes.
And thus ends the portion of the article where we have to mention Harvey Weinstein. *Sigh*
Still, there’s a truth to what Russo says. The Oscars have been accused more and more by general audiences of ignoring populist sensibilities by passing over recent films such as The Dark Knight, Deadpool & Wolverine, and the Russos’ own Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
But part of this is just changing sensibilities of theatregoers. The biggest demographic in theatregoing now is young adults, who have a wide variety of movies to watch aside from the standard “arthouse” fair than they did back in, say, 1970, the year of Patton. The movies they watch just aren’t the same movies that Academy voters will watch. That is, until very recently.
Ever since 2013, AMPAS has been working hard to diversify its voting membership And diversifying a group of stuffy old white people has resulted in nearly doubling the size of The Academy since. In twelve years, their ranks have swelled from 6,000 to over 10,000. This means that blockbuster films are even more likely to get in above-the-line categories. Movies like Black Panther, Joker, the Dune franchise, Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Barbie and Wicked, have all been major players during recent Oscar seasons. And lest we forget Christopher Nolan’s smash Oppenheimer, and the surprise hit Everything Everywhere All At Once both won Best Picture; the latter of which was also produced by Joe and Anthony Russo.
And as for the less popular Oscar films, the arthouse critical darlings, if you will. In an industry increasingly consumed by numbers (you can see it in my bolding of practically every digit in this article), awards season is almost the only way these achievements will be positively recognized.
Filmmakers like Barry Jenkins, Chloe Zhao and Sian Heder would not have their platforms if not for successful awards runs. After all, did audiences flock to see a heart-wrenching drama like Manchester by the Sea in theatres like they did Captain America? No! And who could blame them?
Did Endgame really deserve an Oscar over Parasite? Depending on your point of view, sure! But did it really need it? Maybe that’s what Don Draper meant about money. Maybe he was a founding member of the #BongHive.
Or maybe he just said it as an excuse to yell at a woman. Who knows.
